Born to burn

PROLOGUE ____________________________

I hear a slam against my door. Then a bang. Maybe his fist. Maybe the beer bottle slipping from his grip again. Doesn’t matter. Both hurt the same when they land. A scream rips through the house, sharp, panicked. That one’s from her, my junkie stepmother Michelle. He usually starts with her. Then comes the silence. Too quiet. Too heavy. The kind that seeps into your skin and waits. The kind that coils in your chest until breathing feels like a risk. Now it’s my turn. As always. Best for last, right? Every night is the same, when I’m here. The house feels heavy, but not just from the shouting, the drinking, or the glass that always seems to break around midnight. The weight is older than that. I don’t move, I just lie here. Eyes open, muscles locked and every nerve buzzing. There’s a crack in the ceiling above me. Crooked, thin, and almost artistic, if you’re the kind of person who finds poetry in plaster. I stare at it every night. It’s easier than looking at the door. Yeah, this house is tired. Not just me. The walls sag, the paint peels, the floor groans even when no one’s walking. This whole place feels like it knows. Like it’s sick of pretending it was ever a home. Then, before I can breathe again, that familiar bang of the bedroom door. It shakes the hallway. I flinch so hard I drop my lighter. Another slam. My heart is a goddamn jackhammer and my hands are shaking so bad I can barely pick the lighter back up. I don’t even light it for anything useful. Just to watch the flame dance, just to remind myself I’m still here, still breathing and still fighting not to fall apart. Then again, those all-too-familiar footsteps in the hallway. Dragging and uneven. I hold my breath. He’s close. The doorknob rattles. Just once. Not loud, not urgent. He's just testing. Like I’m a drawer he might open when he’s bored enough. The lock holds for now. He doesn’t knock, he never did. I hear him mutter something, low and slurred. Then he's stumbling away and his bedroom door down the hall slams again. Silence, again. But I don’t move, not until I’m sure it’s safe to breathe, but then it happens again. I'm not surprised by it. Another slam harder and meaner. The door shudders in its frame. My hands are shaking as I flinch and drop the lighter again.

„F.uck…” I whisper. The flame calms me down. Yeah, I’ve been flicking it on and off just to see the flame for about as long as I can remember.

„Phoenix! You two-eyed little s.lut! Open this f.ucking door!” I scramble backward, dragging my blanket with me like it’ll do anything. My knees hit the dresser and it's cold and solid. Something real as I wedge myself between it and the wall. I wrap the blanket tight around my shoulders like armor. My lungs are burning, but I don’t let myself cry. Crying makes noise and noise gives him a reason…not that he ever needed one.

„Please stop…” I whisper. Not for him, just for myself. To feel like I still have a voice in this house. Another bang and the hinges groan. He’s drunk again, of course he is. That cheap rotgut stink pours off him like gasoline and piss. He always gets worse around this time of year. Some anniversary of something broken, some death he never forgave the world for… or maybe himself. Like it’s my fault. Like I haven’t been dying a little every night in this place, too. Now, I can hear him breathing outside the door. Heavy. Wet. Disgusting. I press my forehead to my knees and count backwards. Ten. Nine. Eight… then crack, bang and the wood splinters as my breath catches in my throat.

„You think you’re better than us, freak? With your goddamn eyes?” He laughs, and it scrapes like rusted metal.

„You ain’t special. You’re just trash! Trash. You’re nothing!” Another hard slam.

„Pathetic little c.unt!” Another bang and the chair I jammed under the handle groans. It’s not gonna hold. I think to myself, so I crawl across the floor really fast and quiet as I reach under my mattress. My fingers close around the pocketknife I hid there last summer. Twenty bucks and a knife for a hand job behind a gas station. I’d never used it, never wanted to. But I knew one day I might have to and tonight? It hums in my hand like it already knows what I don’t. I wedge myself into the corner behind the dresser again. My heart is pounding and my breath is shallow as I clench the blade in my shaking fingers.

„Don’t let him in. Please. Don’t let him in. Not tonight.” I whisper breathlessly to myself. I don’t usually pray anymore, but tonight, I might. Because I’m not ready… But I swear, if he gets through that door, I’ll make sure he bleeds. Even if I bleed too. My heart pounds against my ribs like it’s trying to claw its way out. God. Please. Don’t let him in. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.

•

•

•

Hey, hey… yeah, I know. You’re probably wondering what the hell you just walked into. Hi. I’m Phoenix. Nice to meet you, or is it? Weird name, right? I know, believe me… but I didn’t pick it. And despite the name, I’m not made of fire. Sadly. Maybe the full name will sound better? It’s Phoenix Fay Blackwood. Hi. Again. Are you still there? Thanks. It’s weird, right? Talking to no one, or maybe to someone? I don’t even know. I just get tired of the silence getting too loud. So yeah, this is me. Talking to the dark, talking to you, whoever you are. Because right now, I’m just a girl with two different eyes, a white streak in her raven black hair, and a pocketknife under her mattress, thinking it’s gonna save her. Pathetic, yeah. No powers. No prophecy. No one waiting for me to become anything or anyone. This is not some f.ucking movie. This is just life. My life. And it’s a really f.ucked-up one. Usually, just me, the silence, the door I keep locked at night, my dream to get out of this prison and make my life, or maybe even myself something more. One day, yeah… My moms name was Himari. She named me Phoenix before she died. Her name is beautiful, isn’t it? And so was she. I still have her photo. Hidden, just to remember someone who loved me once. We were moving a lot. It was a car crash. I was five. She used her body to shield mine. I lived. She didn’t. Maybe she thought I would be something more. Would she pity me if she saw? Maybe she thought I’d rise from the ashes. Maybe she just liked birds. How should I f.ucking know? All I know is that she died because of me and left me here alone, and with a weird-ass name. Half Japanese, half American. With two different eyes and hair missing color like God got bored midway creating me. Like, what the f***k? I couldn’t be more ridiculous. Maybe I’ll rise from the fire one day, but all I’ve ever done until now is choke on smoke. I’ve been in five foster homes. I don’t even remember how many foster families. Judges with crooked smiles and sleazy questions. Whispers in courtrooms. Fists behind closed doors and the hands of too many stepfathers touching parts of me they shouldn’t. Welcome to the system of p.edophiles and promises. I got used to it, sadly. My elbows grew sharp, and I learned how to use them. But I learned slowly, as the time went by and the hands multiplied. This one stuck. "Family" for the past seven years now. A real win. A drunk stepfather Gregory with too many bottles and too few boundaries he liked to cross anyway. A stepmother Michelle who’s usually high, always angry, always pissed that her life didn’t turn out the way she wanted, and never sober enough to pretend she cared. One breaks and touches. One blames and humiliates. From both, I lock myself in this room when they’re done. So yeah, that’s home. What does that word even mean? Home? Never had one long enough to understand its meaning. Bleach-stiff sheets. Old, yellowish peeling paint. A barred window with a view of nothing, leading nowhere.

•

The crying you heard? That was me. Just a few minutes ago. Now? I’m just sitting here. Old blanket wrapped tight. Staring at a crack in the ceiling like it might drop me an answer. Spoiler, it never does. I’m only sixteen and it already feels like I lived too many lives before. I’ve lied. I’ve stolen food. Got beaten too many times. Skipped class. Snuck out. Sold pills I swiped from my stepmother’s stash when she was too high to count. I’ve done what I had to do. To survive. To take care of myself since I was five. I grew up too quick, too fast, because I had to. I’ve gone to parties I didn’t want to be at. Dropped to my knees in classes, bathrooms, hallways, and bedrooms that reeked of bleach, bad choices and fear. I let strange "uncles" touch me for twenty, sometimes fifty bucks. I trade what I can’t stand to give just to keep enough cash hidden for a way out. It’s not about shame, it’s about survival. It always has been. I don’t drink and I don’t smoke, just some weed here and there, or a little bump of coke. But other than that? No. Yeah, I’ve cut myself a few times before. Just to make sure I could still feel something that was mine. People say I’m cold, but I’m not. You just grow up too fast when you have no other choice and then you get tired of pretending not to drown.

•

Sometimes weird s.hit happens around me. Lights flicker, water rises in the sink, mirrors crack, the air gets heavy, or the room hums. I blame the wiring. The heat. Anything but myself, because if I admit something’s wrong with me? I mean more than it already is, I don’t know what happens next. But deep down, I don’t think it’s wrong. I think something’s sleeping. Waiting. You know? Maybe after everything that's happened to me, I’ve gone mad. I wouldn’t be surprised. Anyway, tonight was the same as most nights here. Shouting. Slamming. Her screams, quiet, footsteps and my door. He always rattles the knob, just once. Testing. The lock held this time. Thank you. So, now? I sit here, curled against the wall, clutching my pocketknife like a prayer. Not because I want to use it, but because I f.ucking will if I have to. It’s 3:39 a.m. I get up, barefoot and quiet. I walk to the window and press my forehead to the glass. Outside, everything’s still. No stars, no moon. Just me and the dark. I love the darkness. It’s calm, quiet and familiar. Like it hugs you when you cry yourself to sleep on those nights where it feels like pain and blood in your mouth.

„If anyone’s out there… I’m still here.” I whisper, but no one answers. No one ever does. And then the crack in the ceiling? It’s glowing, only a little, but enough to make me delusionally wonder… Maybe something heard me? Maybe tomorrow, everything changes. Or maybe… I do.

•

My introduction should sound like pathetic poem written on a grave stone.

Here lies Phoenix Fay Blackwood

age sixteen.

They said she was strange.

She was just surviving.

Still human, but barely.

Still locked in, always.

Still fighting, because she f.ucking has to.

Quiet doesn’t mean weak.

You learn that when no one hears you scream.